


if i love myself, i love you; if i love you, i love myself

by captaindanger



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: 5 Times, Child Abuse, Drug Addiction, F/F, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-06 04:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5402801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captaindanger/pseuds/captaindanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5 times Trish tells Jessica that she loves her and one time Jessica says it back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if i love myself, i love you; if i love you, i love myself

**Author's Note:**

> is everyone sick of these 5+1 fics yet because i'm not
> 
> title from the poem 'do you love me?' by mewlana jalaluddin rumi

The first time Dorothy strikes Trish across the face is coincidentally the first time Trish tells Jessica that she loves her. Trish had messed up her lines on set too many times, holding up production; Dorothy, humiliated, had kept her smile in place until they had returned home at the end of the day. When the door was shut firmly behind them, Dorothy had started in on Trish, calling her lazy and ungrateful, the usual. Trish, who had been spending too much time with Jessica, told her mother to 'fuck off and die.' Jessica hears the slap from her bedroom.

She walks into the living room to find Trish curled up on the carpet, holding a hand to her cheek. Dorothy stands over her, clutching her daughter's arm, her apologies sounding more like a shift of blame onto Trish. Like a knee jerk reaction, Jessica grabs Dorothy by the lapels of her perfectly pressed pink blazer and throws her across the room. She had been aiming for the glass coffee table but ends up throwing her onto the leather couch where she crumples into a heap. Dorothy gapes at her, shaking hands clutching at her chest.

After Dorothy runs out of the house off to God knows where, too afraid to stay in the same house as Jessica, Trish and she raid the well-stocked liquor cabinet. Jessica peels the lock off of it like a sticker. She grabs a bag of frozen peas from the freezer and makes Trish hold it to her cheek to prevent swelling. They climb into Trish's bed, a frilly baby pink monstrosity that Dorothy had obviously picked out, piled high with fat pillows and stuffed animals. Jessica settles Trish inbetween her legs, her back to Jessica's front. Trish hiccups, taking sips from the cup of whiskey that Jessica had mixed with a smuggled can of Coke so she wouldn't choke on the bitter taste of alcohol. Jessica holds the bottle in her right hand and grips Trish's hip with her left.

"How am I supposed to explain this to the make-up ladies on set?" Trish slurs, holding the plastic cup a little too hard in her hands. 

"Tell them you ran into a wall or something," Jessica says. Glancing down at the crown of Trish's head, she suggests, "Or you could tell them the truth."

Trish doesn't respond, just drains the rest of the soda-whiskey mixture, coughing a little at the burn. She leans back into Jessica, resting her head on Jessica's shoulder. That way, Jessica can see the blooming bruise on Trish's cheek, a purple splotch marring the pale skin. Jessica grinds her teeth together, wondering if she'll be able to hold herself back from making the same mark on Dorothy's cheek the next time she sees her. 

After a moment of tense silence, Trish says, "You shouldn't have done that. Thrown her, I mean. It's just going to make things worse for the both of us." Jessica doesn't tell her that she can't help it, that even the idea of anyone laying a finger on the only person that matters in her insignificant life sends her into a rabid frenzy. Instead, she shrugs, Trish's head moving up and down with her shoulders. Trish has her eyes closed, light eyelashes laying delicately across her cheekbones. She takes a deep breath, her back arching into Jessica's stomach, and says, "I love you, Jess."

Jessica tenses up but Trish doesn't seem to notice. No one has said 'I love you' to her in exactly one year, eight months, and fourteen days. The words stir something in her and it feels like her heart unfreezes and begins to beat again. Trish's breaths even out, and her eyes fall shut. Jessica sweeps a hand over Trish's blonde head, smoothing down her bangs. She sucks the rest of the whiskey from the bottle and follows Trish into sleep a few minutes later.

__________

Jessica comes home on a Thursday night in their senior year to find Trish limp on the floor, a string of spit connecting her mouth to a puddle of vomit on the rug. The sight takes a few years off of Jessica's life and she would be afraid of passing out from sheer terror if she didn't think she was the only person in the immediate vicinity able to call an ambulance. She almost breaks the landline with how hard she's clutching it. The voice of the woman on the other line colors with surprise when she hears the name 'Patricia Walker' but doesn't say anything except that the ambulance is on its way and whether Trish is still breathing. She is.

Jessica hangs up, too anxious to keep answering the 911 operator's questions about Trish's condition. She cradles Trish's cheek with one of her hands, the other holding her thin wrist to monitor her stuttering heartbeat. Hot tears are dripping off her face and onto a bleary-eyed Trish, who is barely conscious. "What the fuck, Trish. What the fuck." She chants it over and over again like a mantra, keeping her focused on the girl laying still beneath her. Trish's breaths are too short and too far apart. Jessica leans her head down and touches her nose to Trish's temple, breath fanning across Trish's cheek like she could give Trish some of her own oxygen.

Jessica rides in the ambulance when it comes but she doesn't remember any of it; she doesn't remember sitting in the waiting room, waiting for Trish to have her stomach pumped; she doesn't remember being led to Trish's room afterwards. Dorothy shows up at some point and puts on the frantic mother act (or maybe it isn't an act, Jessica can never tell when she's being genuine). She steps out of the room several times to take calls from agents and reporters, her business voice on. The beep of the heart rate monitor ticks away the seconds, and Jessica feels herself staring off into space but can't pull herself out of this trance. She is tired, bone-tired, of watching her best friend suffer. 

"I'm going to take you away," she whispers to Trish, or to herself, or to the world. "I'm going to take us somewhere you'll be safe from Dorothy and can go to rehab. We'll live in an apartment together. Maybe we'll get a cat. And I promise no one will ever hurt you again." The words feel false but it's something to cling to, a Trish that doesn't have the haunted, empty look in her eyes. 

She had thought Trish was sleeping but a cold hand reaches out, jostling the IV attached to it, and takes Jessica's. Trish's eyes open, just a slit, and she's looking straight at Jessica with the most sincere, adoring gaze. "I love you, Jessica." She doesn't let go of Jessica's hand, even after she falls back asleep.

__________

They finally move out, into their own apartment, just like Jessica had said. It's with the _It's Patsy_ money, royalties that Jessica had had to threaten out of Dorothy, but it doesn't matter because it's _theirs_. Walking into the empty space is like finally tasting freedom, and they squeeze each other, laughing giddy until their chests hurt. They have to move everything in themselves, even the furniture. Trish insists on helping, even though Jessica has super strength, a point she stressed while they stood around the cardboard boxes filled with their stuff, hatching a game plan. "Superheroes can pull muscles, too," Trish says, and huffs and puffs as she lugs boxes up the steps of their new building. Jessica does not let her help with the couch, though, which she drags up the stairs like nothing. 

They don't unpack right away, because they're already tired and sweaty. They collapse onto the floor, making snow angels in the shag carpet. Trish orders pizza, using a fake name, and when the delivery guy doesn't recognize her she grins so hard Jessica is afraid her skin will split. Eating on the floor, they look around the room and decide where things will go. They don't have anything at the moment but an old couch that Jessica had bought for twenty bucks off of Craigslist and the mattress of Trish's queen bed, but they imagine up all of the things they will buy to fill the space, _their_ space. A TV, a dining table and some chairs, a few end tables, a bed. Bed, singular; the thought sets Jessica's heart galloping.

They end the night on the old mattress, lying on their sides, facing each other. The tips of their noses brush, and Trish smiles sweetly at Jessica. "You know," Trish says, "for the first time in a long time the future doesn't seem scary. It seems...exciting." She wiggles in place and Jessica laughs. Trish takes one of her hands, folding their fingers together. 

"Look at Patsy, all grown up with her own place," Jessica teases Trish. 

Trish shakes her head. "I'm not Patsy anymore. Just Trish." She looks down at their hands demurely. "That's how you make me feel. Like a person, not a character on television." Jessica feels her face heat up and she scoffs to hide her pleased smile. Trish tucks her head under Jessica's chin. "Love you," she murmurs with sleep in her voice. Jessica has half a mind to say it back.

__________

She's into the fourth month of the eighteen tortuous months spent on the arm of Kilgrave. She'd had nothing against purple before, but now the sight makes her want to gag. The feeling of having no control whatsoever over your own will is the worst thing Jessica has ever felt, worse than waking up in the hospital and finding out her family was dead. She can't even pick her own nose without Kilgrave giving her the okay. During the day, he sticks her to his side, not letting her out of his sight. He tells her, "stay," like she's a dog, and she feels like one, too. She depends on him for food and water, to tell her when it's okay to relieve herself; he takes her on walks, an invisible leash wrapped around her neck. During the night, he keeps her even closer, his arms wrapped around her waist, his naked skin pressed against hers. It's then that she can summon the power to shudder, a scream trapped in her throat. 

But she thinks the worst thing he does to her is that he lets her speak to Trish. It would be better if he had cut off communication altogether, but he tells her to call Trish twice a month so that Trish doesn't get worried and calls the police. He whispers in her ear and tells her what to say, his hot breath creeping down the side of her neck. The first few calls, Trish had sounded confused but understanding. By the fourth call, Trish was starting to worry that Jessica hadn't come back to the apartment in so long, was she okay? It's the eighth call, and Trish sounds resigned, knows something is deeply wrong but can't do anything about it. 

"Are you well? Are you eating? Do you have a place to stay?"

"I'm fine," Kilgrave says through Jessica's mouth. 

"Do you think you'll come back soon?" Trish asks, and Jessica can hear her voice crack, the way it does when she's swallowing down sobs. 

"I don't know," is what he lets Jessica say, when all she wants to do is scream, " _Help me, help me, help me!_ "

Trish sighs, defeated. Jessica begs her in her mind not to give up on Jessica. She's the last person alive who cares. "I have to go," Kilgrave tells her to say.

"Okay," Trish murmurs. "I love you, Jess," she manages to say, desperation in her voice, before Jessica hangs up. 

Kilgrave takes the phone from her and puts it in a drawer in the desk belonging to whoever owns the apartment they're staying in that week. He locks it with a key that he keeps tucked into his pocket; Jessica wonders how he can justify sealing away her one link to the outside world if she's supposed to be by his side willingly, loving him willingly. When he straightens up, he reaches his fingertips up to her face and she knows better now than to flinch back. He brushes at something on her cheeks, smearing a wetness across her skin. "Why are you crying, Jessie?"

__________

Jessica wakes up from a nightmare with a wail that rips its way out of her mouth. The dark is suffocating, the smell and feel of the bed unfamiliar. There's no one wrapped around her and she's wearing pajamas, a sleep shirt and sweatpants. There's sweat on her upper lip and forehead, on her palms and creeping its way down her back. 

Someone opens the door and Jessica tucks into herself, folding her knees to her chest. "Jess?" a soft voice, female, asks. It brings Jessica back to Earth, back to the present, to the apartment she shares with Trish, the room that's hers and hers alone. She's safe. She's herself. But there's still dread curling sick in her stomach and she wants to vomit it up. 

Trish walks over to her like she's approaching a wild animal that could lash out at any moment. Jessica doesn't relax as she sits down. There's that thought still running through her head that has been running through her head since the night of the bus crash: is this Trish or is this Kilgrave wearing someone else's face? But she lets Trish wrap her up into a hug, lets her tug Jessica's head down to her chest so that it rests there. Jessica doesn't cry, and Trish doesn't expect her to.

"Another bad dream?" Trish asks her. The question doesn't warrant an answer, so Jessica doesn't give her one. "Do you want me to stay again?" Jessica nods, and they stretch out on the bed in a more comfortable position. Trish lays behind her, an arm under Jessica's head and one resting on her stomach. The fear in her belly quiets for a while, replaced by a numb feeling. Trish pets her forehead soothingly.

"Do you remember when we were still in high school? The day I overdosed?" Trish asks her. Jessica nods, her hair tugging at her scalp from where it's trapped under Trish's bicep. She tries her best not to think about that day, the feeling of the world dropping out from under her when she found Trish on the floor. "You made me a promise, that no one would ever hurt me again. I didn't really believe you," Trish confesses, "but I still carried those words around like armor. I had my Jessica, whatever the world threw at me, I could handle." Trish takes a deep breath. "I'm making the same promise to you," she says resolutely. "I don't care if it's a man with mind control or a spider. I'll never let anyone touch you ever again. Either of us," she adds. Jessica wants to laugh, but the words still feel good, blanketing her body in warmth. Even though she would never let Trish stand in the way of any danger, the mere fact that Trish would, for her, makes her eyes well up. 

Trish presses her nose into the nape of Jessica's neck, breathing her in like she's making sure Jessica is really there. "I love you," she says to Jessica's back, and there's something different in her voice this time, something Jessica's never heard before. A selfishness. "I love you," she says again, quieter. Jessica wonders if, for the rest of her life, she'll hear those words and think of _him_.

__________

She watches Kilgrave stick his tongue in Trish's mouth and the force of will that's keeping her feet in place is starting to dwindle. It takes everything inside of her to keep the fiery hatred out of her eyes as he describes what he'll do to Trish, to replace that hatred with a look of failure instead. She wants to rip off the hands he has on her best friend, throw them into the ocean. But she doesn't. All in good time.

The look of glee on his face when he thinks that he's won makes her want to choke. "Smile," he instructs her, and she does, thinking of what his face will look like when she snaps him in half. Her smile just makes him happier, and his hands are on her face, the feeling of his skin making hers crawl. 

"Tell me you love me," he demands, and she looks over his shoulder. Behind him is the girl who became her family when she didn't have any left, who loved Jessica even when Jessica couldn't say it back. She thinks it's time she finally does.

"I love you," she tells Trish, and then she snaps Kilgrave's neck. 

After, when she's been released from the police station and Trish clings to her, she regrets holding back those three words from the one person who deserves them. No one has compelled her to love Trish, which makes it all the sweeter when she breathes into Trish's neck, "I love you, I love you, I love you." She promises Trish and herself that she'll never stop saying it for the rest of their lives.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in the lobby of the outpatient surgery while my mother was getting a colonoscopy so hopefully it doesn't suck too hard ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
